I believe that Nietzsche's reasoning was that there is hard work to be done, and we must be the ones who do it (for example; Zarathustra leaving his mountain cave and descending to us common people.) The cave is a place of tranquility and pleasure, but we have to leave our niche and go into the real world, which is a world of hardships and pain, but only there can we grow.

However most people never leave their comfort zone, therefore never improving themselves ( because they prefer not to face hardships.) Maybe I can include myself to this description. Although I understand Nietzsche's reasoning, I try to live my life in a more Epicurean way. Good wine, great companions and the Mediterranean warm air and blue sea.

I find it is hard to know exactly what Neitzsche was reasoning, in fact that would be a concentric circle rather than just flowing with his thoughts - enjoying the supernatural ride or so to speak.

As the mind goes outside the square of reality, the unconscious in it's unlimited form becomes open. This unconscious is partially located on a timeline to the mind/body but still it is like the state of death - the bardos - bouncing around.

This is what is commonly referred to as "The Philosopher's Death". But this "death" is necessary if one wishes to free himself from the restraints of ordinary consciousness. People who have never experienced this penetration into the unconscious cannot even begin to fathom a person that has. It's like using something the size of a dime to comprehend something the size of a silver dollar. It can't be done. Once "The Philosopher's Death" is experienced, one starts to see everything so clearly without any regard for death (which has already been psychologically intuited). Only then can one truly understand the purpose of what we humans call "life". Life is biology. To protect, defend, preserve and perpetuate your own species (i.e., your own race) is the function of biology. To not make this principle your sacred duty is a denial of life.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ponytail

The personal energy used for everyday living then has to be placed istabilising and staying out of the unconscious mind to live in reality. The unconscious mind is not the goody-goody, contains the past and future of actions committed or to be committed related to the thought patterning of now in the individual.

So you see the brilliance of scientists, philosophers etc only to hear their mind snapped. They go to great height exposing society - maybe gently leading society to a greater reality - and end up burning out - going mad because society is only limited to deal with the realities of pathologies of the platform they have. Others go into a second innocence finding it hard to even operate a washing machine, or cook their own tea based on the acuteness of their mind state - out there in the never-never.

You're absolutely correct. To stay in the unconscious for too long, not only makes one dysfunctional within the confines of society, but it also exposes one to insanity. We need to learn from, rather than condemn, the individuals that were willing to risk insanity (or death) to reach the Absolute (or their magnificent goal). This, after all, is the essence of the Faustian soul--the driving force of the Western psyche.

This is what is commonly referred to as "The Philosopher's Death". But this "death" is necessary if one wishes to free himself from the restraints of ordinary consciousness. People who have never experienced this penetration into the unconscious cannot even begin to fathom a person that has. It's like using something the size of a dime to comprehend something the size of a silver dollar. It can't be done. Once "The Philosopher's Death" is experienced, one starts to see everything so clearly without any regard for death (which has already been psychologically intuited). Only then can one truly understand the purpose of what we humans call "life". Life is biology. To protect, defend, preserve and perpetuate your own species (i.e., your own race) is the function of biology. To not make this principle your sacred duty is a denial of life.

You're absolutely correct. To stay in the unconscious for too long, not only makes one dysfunctional within the confines of society, but it also exposes one to insanity. We need to learn from, rather than condemn, the individuals that were willing to risk insanity (or death) to reach the Absolute (or their magnificent goal). This, after all, is the essence of the Faustian soul--the driving force of the Western psyche.

The information I have comes from observation. Good to see others have also observed this. I will be able to use generic terms now when describing this phenomena of the human mind.

My layman's gibberish for being too long in the unconscious mind is called "Falling into oneself" - indeed insanity is the risk, that is why India has as part of the many heads of the Gods and Goddesses the "Mad Man and Mad Woman".

Bodichy gets credit for the following passage from Carl Jung’s Seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. It addresses Nietzsche’s insanity.

“Nietzsche came more truly and more specifically to grips with the psychology of man; therefore, his critical work was chiefly psychological, and he felt that the regeneration of man was needed, a readjustment.

So certain points which Nietzsche sees and criticizes are absolutely correct, and they show him to be a remarkable psychologist; he is one of he greatest psychologists that ever lived, on account of his discoveries. He saw certain things very clearly and pointed them out even cruelly, but they are truths--of course disagreeable truths.

To a man like Nietzsche, gripped by an extraordinary suffering, it is a real consolation when somebody says: 'All that terrible trouble which burns you now with the tortures of hell, will come to an end; you will go to sleep and not know what is happening to your body.' If you have ever experienced such a state of oblivion in your life, where only your body lives, then you know all the bliss of the Dionysian revelation. And Nietzsche had that revelation. There are beautiful poems later on where it becomes quite obvious. He really got out of himself for a moment on the wings of an extraordinary enthusiasm, absolutely disentangled from the worry of discriminating consciousness. He actually suffered form an overintensity of consciousness...

Now Nietzsche in those years after 1879, when he had given up his academic occupation in Basel, was restlessly wandering about, living in little hotels and pensions, sometimes on the French or Italian Riviera, and in the summer in the Engadine, supported by certain wealthy friends because he had no means of his own. And always alone. He could not stand people. He was desirous of having friends, always seeking a friend, but when such a poor fellow turned up, he was never good enough and Nietzsche got impatient right away. I know people who knew Nietzsche personally, because he lived in my own town, Basel, so I heard many details of this kind. For instance, in one of his lectures he was talking about Greece and Graecia Magna in most enthusiastic terms, and after the lecture a young man who had not understood something that he had said--for those ordinary students were of course not quite able to follow Nietzsche's tremendous mind--went up to the professor to ask him about it. But before he could put in his very humble request, Nietzsche said: 'Ah now you are the man! That blue sky of Hellas! We are going together!' And the young man thought: 'How can I go with this famous professor and how have I the money to do it?'--and he receded further and further, Nietzsche going at him and talking of the eternal smile of the skies of Hellas and God knows what, till the young man backed up against the wall. Then suddenly Nietzsche realized that the fellow was frightened by his enthusiasm, and he turned away abruptly and never spoke to him again. That is the way he dealt with friends, he was absolutely unable to adapt to people and when they did not understand him right on the moment, he had no patience whatever. He was also exceedingly impatient with himself. He was terribly, recklessly impulsive. He liked to be invited to certain social gatherings, but if there was a piano, he played madly; he went at it till his fingers bled. That is no exaggeration, that is a fact.

Some people once watched Schopenhauer while he was taking a walk on a hill behind Frankfurt. He was walking up and down, always murmuring to himself, and they thought he must have some great secret thoughts in his mind. Then somebody went up behind him and listened to him, and to his great amazement he heard: If only I had married Ann So-and-So fifty years ago! Nobody knew that name but they investigated and found out that this Miss So-and-So was the daughter of a druggist who had sold the best pills against cholera, and with his death the recipe was lost. Voila! That is Schopenhauer.

Yes he was full of contradictions. His human existence was quite apart from his philosophy, while in Nietzsche the two began to come together in a very tragic way. So he goes really further than Schopenhauer whose philosophy is merely a mental affair, while Nietzsche feels that it concerns the whole man; to him it was his own immediate reality.

One is never sure whether Zarathustra is speaking, or Nietzsche--or is it his anima? This is not true, that is not true, and yet everything is true; Nietzsche is Zarathustra, he is the anima, he is the shadow, and so on. That comes from the fact that Nietzsche was alone, with nobody to understand his experiences. Also, he was perhaps not inclined to share them, so there was no human link, no human rapport, no relationship to hold him down to his reality. Oh, he was surrounded by human beings and he had friends, a few at least--but they were in no way capable of understanding what was going on in him, and that was of course necessary.

All of the educated people in Basel were horrified at the spectacle, shocked out of their wits in every respect. They considered him a revolutionary, an atheist--there was nothing that was not said against him. And at the same time they were frightened because they felt an amazing amount of truth in what he said. It needed a half a century at least to prepare the world to understand what happened to Nietzsche.

Of course it is no use speculating as to what would have happened if Nietzsche had had an understanding companion. We only speculate about such matters because we know something now about the experience of the collective unconscious; what to do in such a case is to us almost a professional question. Nietzsche's case is settled, but we must understand what happens to a man without the aid of that understanding. Nietzsche is an excellent example of an isolated individual trying to cope with such an experience, and we see the typical consequences. His feet don't remain on the ground, his head swells up and he becomes sort of a balloon; one is no longer sure of his identity, whether he is a god or a demon or a devil, a ghost or a madman or a genius.

When, therefore, Nietzsche is confronted with the unconscious he is confronted with his inferior function. His main function is surely intution, which would be up above, connected with the brain, with consciousness, and that is in opposition to the things below, namely, the three other functions [feeling, thinking, sensing], a trinity. He was strictly identical with one function. Sure enough, Nietzsche in the time when he wrote Zarathustra was absolutely identical with his intuition, using only that function, to the very exhaustion of his brain. Zarathustra created a peculiar disturbance in his brain: it really brought about his final insanity on account of the extraordinary strain to which it was subjected.

...the prophecy, the unmistakable anticipation of the final catastrophe, his madness, where his mind or his soul was dead long before his body. And during his madness he was utterly gone--there was absolutely no connection with him. It was an a-typical form of the general paralysis of the insane, and he was quite bad; one could not talk to him. There was no reasonable connection. Then he had quiet times when she [his sister] could walk with him but he could not react if talked to; there were only a few intelligible remarks. For instance, he once said to his sister: 'Are we not quite happy?'--perfectly reasonably, and then he was gone, confused. People have concluded from that that his was a divine mania--what the Greeks call mania, a divine state, the state of being filled with the god; one is entheos, the god within. The remark was quoted as evidence that he had reached a sort of nirvana condition. You see, we can assume that behind madness there is a sort of nirvana condition."

-------------------------

I’ve been searching for another of Jung’s commentaries on Nietzsche’s insanity, in which Jung says that Nietzsche’s kundalini spiralled up his spine and took his selfhood with it. What went up, didn’t come down. Nietzsche had a hyper-dynamic “philosopher’s death”, an ego-transcending ecstasy, a cosmic-rush from which he never returned.

I need to reread Jung’s, “Psychology of Kundalini Yoga.” In the meantime, here is a glimpse of Evola’s take on the dangers of runaway kundalini. Like the Dionysian, kundalini is yin-energy and intoxicating. Not bad in itself, of course, and not good if uninformed by yang.

“... it is said that when vital energy no long runs along the two lines on the sides (of the spine), as happens in the ordinary existence of a normal man, but, with the obstruction removed, enters the central duct (of the spine) or sushumna, the conditional quality of the time is suspended and 'the fire of death blazes'; that is, a rupture of level takes place equivalent to the crisis that in many traditions is generally called 'initiatory death.' 'You who ascend like a streak of lightning,' says a hymn to the Goddess, who is manifested in this. Therefore, it is natural that the practises in question should not be free from grave perils; the texts say that he who awakens the kundalini without the necessary skill and the knowledge of a true yogi may meet not only serious disturbances but even madness and death (actual death, not 'initiatory' or 'philosopher's' death).”
Julius Evola
The Metaphysics of Sex.

I want to start contributing my comments to this thread in the days ahead, especially on Nietzche's notebook, Will To Power. I reprise some comments I made a few days ago:

Quote:

What is wrong with sick society nowadays? Nietzche put it succinctly:
"the declining instincts have become master over the ascending instincts -- The Will to nothingness has become master over the will to life!" -- Nietzche, Will to Power, pp 217, Kaufman Translation

The Will To Power has been on the descendancy by this ‘Will to Nothingness‘, a death instinct, found in the Liberals, to embrace and champion the weak, the loathsome (Aids, gays), the unwanted (Foreigners and minorities). What was low, is now placed on high. Life is on the descendancy , nothingness is on the ascendancy.

Everything in life can be divided into two groups: ‘Death Orientation‘, or ‘Life Orientation‘.

In essence, this ascendant 'Will to Nothingness' is also a ‘Will to Power‘, at least on the part of it's demagogues. They (Liberal Demagogues) achieve power by convincing others to give it up (and life itself as a result). Their followers will become ‘nothing’ while they become ‘something’.

This is equivalent to these Liberals, with their death mask and pallor, asking people to voluntarily walk into a ghastly slaughter house, with signs of their impending doom on the walls along the way. The Liberals promise to deliver and take care of their charges, at least as long as they are alive, like so many well fed cattle

Die Zeit für die Juden zu ehren, sich bald zu Ende sein
The time for the Jews honoring themselves will soon be at an end

When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexually. Sterility itself disposes one toward a certain masculinity of taste; for man is, if I may say so, "the sterile animal."

In revenge and in love woman is more barbarious than man.

Nietzsche

Top notch quotes, misogynist ? humour ? I'll let you decide.

(I got these quotes from Part 4 - EPIGRAMS AND INTERLUDES, The Basic Writings of Nietzsche.)

"Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!"--thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to label as vices--owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before "modern ideas", they alter only, WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire makes its conquest--as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of yesterday--namely, according to the principle, "as slowly as possible"! A thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he will calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces. That which is at present called a "nation" in Europe, and is really rather a RES FACTA than NATA (indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet a race, much less such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such "nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they desired--or if they were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish--COULD now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT working and planning for that end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be absorbed and assimilated by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the "wandering Jew",--and this bent and impulse (it possibly betokens a mitigation of the Jewish instincts) should be well noted and accommodated: to that end it might be useful and fair to expel the anti-Semitic screamers from the country."

Nietzsche wanted the Jews to intermarry, interbreed and completely and entirely assimilate with Gentile Europeans, and in the process lose all sense of Jewish identity, thus taking care of the Jewish problem(as did Napoleon). So I've always found it rather ironic and odd that so many National Socialist(Nazi) types of both past and present venerate Nietzsche and yet at the same time oppose and detest intermixing between Jews and White Gentiles "Aryans" even though that is exactly what Nietzsche proposed, advocated and supported.

Nietzsche wanted the Jews to intermarry, interbreed and assimilate with Gentile Europeans, and in the process lose all sense of Jewish identity, thus taking care of the Jewish problem(as did Napoleon), so I've always found it rather ironic and odd that so many National Socialist(Nazi) types of both past and present venerate Nietzsche and yet at the same time oppose and detest intermixing between Jews and White Gentiles even though that is exactly what Nietzsche proposed and supported.